During the flight by an aircraft over an area with no radar coverage, such as an ocean region, the aircraft makes position reports intended for an air traffic controller located on the ground or the airline operations centre. These position reports, indicating the position of the aircraft at a given instant, are made by HF link or satellite link and are infrequent.
Currently, the reporting of aircraft positions in ocean regions is inadequate; the crash of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic is an example of the situation to be improved to enable rescue teams to more easily find the last position of the aircraft and not that dating from a few hours before the accident. It is also known that accidents in continental regions outside of radar coverage are fairly frequent in the United States and in Africa.
When an aircraft in a transoceanic flight or in regions without radar coverage disappears, the older the last aircraft position report is, the more time is lost by the search teams in finding its last location. This observation is equally valid in the case of a crash and in the case of a diverted aircraft if the transponder has been switched off or damaged. In these aircraft search situations, time is a critical factor for the victims and for the recovery of the black boxes.
The invention aims to mitigate the abovementioned problems by proposing a method and a device that make it possible to improve the locating of aircraft that have disappeared. The invention makes it possible to extend the knowledge of the location of an aircraft in areas with no radar coverage by using the aircraft in its vicinity to record position reports. This information is then downloaded upon the arrival of the aircraft. If an aircraft disappears (crash, diversion), it is then possible to retrace its trajectory for a longer time than with conventional position reports.